of Dominican exiles, consisting of two priests, a prioress, four choir-nuns, four lay sisters, and a young girl not yet professed, joined the nuns of Syon House, Middlesex (now London), and crossed to the Netherlands. Queen Elizabeth then granted the estate to Edward Darbyshire and John Bere, who purchased much of the lands of Dartford Priory made available by the dissolution of the monasteries. In the midst of war in 1649, the estate, including the mansion house, manor, farm, lime kiln, wharf, and land (including the chalk cliffs and salt and freshwater marshes) were passed to Captain Edward Brent of Southward for £1122. It was sold in 1748 to William, Viscount Duncannon, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, who on his father's death succeeded him as Earl of Bessborough and Baron Ponsonby of Sysonby. He lived at Ingress with his wife Carolina, the eldest daughter of William, Duke of Devonshire. He greatly improved the seat, and reputedly commissioned Capability Brown to landscape the grounds (though evidence for this is lacking). In 1760, Carolina died at Ingress. The property was then sold to John Calcraft, MP for Rochester. On John Calcroft's death in 1772, the estate passed to his son John, who sold it in 1788 to John Disney Roebuck, on whose death in 1796 it passed to his son Henry Roebuck. The estate then passed to William Havelock (1757-1837) shipbuilder and ship-owner, father of Sir Henry Havelock (1795-1857), army officer, who spent his early childhood at the Ingress Estate and attended Dartford Grammar School. William Havelock lost his money through solicitors' fraud and loss of uninsured ships. Ingress Park estate was sold to the Crown. At that point, owing to the contemporary conflict with France, plans were drawn up for a large dockyard to be built from Northfleet to Greenhithe (which would have included the Ingress Estate). The house was demolished (1820) and the site cleared. However, instead docks were built at Greenwich and the plans for Greenhithe-Northfleet were dropped. Construction, development and occupants In 1831, a wealthy lawyer named James Harmer purchased the land, and in 1833 built his Elizabethan-style mansion, which he called Ingress Abbey, on the banks of the Thames. He provided his architect, Charles Moreing, with £120,000 for the construction of follies, grottoes, and hermit's caves. Some of the stone from the Old London Bridge was used in building Ingress Abbey. The poet Eliza Cook lived and wrote some